(Thomas Sowell discusses abolishing the Fed on
Judge Napolitano’s show.)
Government budget crises can be painful, but the political rhetoric
accompanying these crises can also be fascinating and revealing.
Perhaps the most famous American budget crisis was New York City’s, back
during the 1970s. When President Gerald Ford was unwilling to bail them out, the
famous headline in the New York Daily News read, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
President Ford caved and bailed them out, after all. The rhetoric worked.
That is why so many other cities and states — not to mention the federal
government — have continued on with irresponsible spending, and are now facing
new budget crises, with no end in sight.
What would have happened if Ford had stuck to his guns and not set the
dangerous precedent of bailing out local irresponsibility with the taxpayers’
money? New York would have gone bankrupt. But millions of individuals and
organizations go bankrupt without dropping dead.
Bankruptcy conveys the plain facts that political rhetoric tries to conceal.
It tells people who depended on the bankrupt government that they can no longer
depend on that bankrupt government. It tells the voters who elected that
bankrupt government, with its big spending promises, that they made a bad
mistake that they would be wise to avoid making again in the future.
Legally, bankruptcy wipes out commitments made to public sector unions, whose
extravagant pay and pension contracts are bleeding municipal and state
governments dry. Is putting an end to political irresponsibility and legalized
union racketeering dropping dead?
Politics being what it is, we are sure to hear all sorts of doomsday rhetoric
at the thought of cutbacks in government spending. The poor will be starving in
the streets, to hear the politicians and the media tell it.Party On
But the amount of money it would take to keep the poor from starving in the
streets is chump change compared to how much it would take to keep on feeding
unions, subsidized businesses and other special interests who are robbing the
taxpayers blind.
Letting armies of government employees retire in their 50s, to live for
decades on pensions larger than they were making when they were working, costs a
lot more than keeping the poor from starving in the streets.
Pouring the taxpayers’ money down a thousand bottomless pits of public and
private boondoggles costs a lot more than keeping the poor from starving in the
streets.
Bankruptcy says: “We just don’t have the money.” End of discussion.Read
more.

Hope, change, and helplessness

The anniversary Barack Obama most dreads is approaching, providing stark evidence, even to his base, that he is way over his head when it comes to the responsibilities of governing.

That anniversary, of course, is, as Toby Harnden of the UK Telegraph reminds us:

…the same day he took the presidential oath a second time. It came in the form of a gravely worded executive order.

In it, Obama solemnly proclaimed: “The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order.”

The order was signed in the presence of a gaggle of retired senior military officers who had backed Mr Obama’s candidacy. One of them, Maj Gen Paul Eaton, declared January 22a “blockbuster day”

It turns out that the presidency is a lot more complicated than Obama realized from his perspective as a mere talker. The devil is in the details, and in the case of Gitmo, little details like finding alternative places to keep dangerous terrorists are devilish indeed. Outright bribery secured a few slots overseas, most famously the 4 Uyghurs housed in perpetual vacation in Bermuda at US Taxpayer expense. No state in the United States was willing to risk housing these dangerous terrorists on its own soil, and the Democrat-dominated Congress refused to allocate funds for the purpose of tyransferring the prisoners to the mainland.

So Obama’s first executive order, regarded by his base as a solemn commitment, is now a colossal joke, evidence that he can’t accomplish even that over which he has executive powers. No doubt he would prefer that January 22nd come and go unremarked. But that isn’t in the cards, because there are actually lots of left wing Democrats who care passionately over the perceived injustices of holding enemy combatants until the war they launched is over.

Obama’s incompetence is what both left and right will memorialize in three weeks.

The World from Berlin

‘Barack Obama Was the Biggest Loser of 2010′

AFP

Obama leaves the White House on Wednesday, heading for his Christmas vacation on Hawaii.

After months of stalling, the US Senate has finally approved the New START disarmament treaty with Russia. The ratification is a major triumph for US President Barack Obama, but German commentators warn that it may be the last such success for a long time.

US President Barack Obama came to power promising a new era of bipartisan cooperation. But there has been precious little of that since he took office. Indeed, Republican opposition to Obama’s initiatives has been markedly vociferous.

Now, in a rare victory for the president, the US Congress has ratified the New START disarmament treaty, with Republican support. On Wednesday, the Senate approved the treaty, which had been stalled for months, by 71 votes to 26. At least 13 Republicans voted with the Democrats after being won over by Obama. The ratification is an important foreign policy triumph for Obama, who suffered a crushing defeat in November’s midterm elections.

The treaty, which Obama signed with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April 2010, involves Russia and the US cutting their stock of nuclear warheads by 30 percent and will also introduce a new mutual inspection regime. “This is the most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades,” Obama said. It replaces the START treaty, which was signed in 1991 and expired in December 2009.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated Obama on the ratification. In a statement issued on Wednesday evening in Berlin, the chancellor said the treaty was an “important milestone in the development of a real partnership” with Russia. She also expressed her hope that further disarmament steps would follow the ratification of New START.

The two houses of the Russian parliament still need to ratify the treaty. The lower house, the Duma, might do so as early as Friday, the Duma’s speaker said Thursday.

On Thursday, German media commentators take a look at what the ratification means for Obama’s presidency.

“Barack Obama was the biggest loser of 2010. He allowed the angry Tea Party movement to grow powerful, he did not pass any decent laws despite his majority in Congress and he was aloof, elitist and indecisive. He had to accept a formidable, yet entirely understandable, defeat in the midterm elections as a result. No one expected much from Obama, at least not during the rest of this year.”

“Now, just days before Christmas, Congress has ratified the New START disarmament treaty with Russia. … Will Obama build on this victory? Is it Obama’s breakthrough as a president? Will it mark his comeback as a reformer? … Is a new era of cooperation beginning?”

“The opposite is much more probable, namely that the disarmament treaty will be Obama’s last significant achievement for a long time. In January, the new Congress will convene. The new representatives who won in the midterm elections will come to Washington, including those Tea Party activists who have little interest in making compromises with Obama. With them, Congress will move to the right …. Possibly the only reason why so many Republicans voted for Obama’s law was because they themselves fear the new era and see few chances of passing sensible, bipartisan laws in the new Congress.”

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

“All previous treaties between Washington and Moscow regarding strategic nuclear weapons are associated with names of a Republican presidents, such as Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. Nevertheless, this time around, representatives of the Republican Party left no stone unturned in their bid to prevent the new disarmament treaty being passed by the Senate. Even though some of them may have had entirely legitimate concerns about the treaty on principle, or regarding its details, it was clear that the Republicans wanted to deprive Obama of one of his few demonstrable foreign policy successes. Half a dozen former Republican secretaries of state testified that the ratification of the New START treaty was in the national interest of the United States. But many senators were willing to put the supposed interests of the party over those of the country. How shameful!”

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

“The ratification of the New START treaty is extremely important. The treaty guarantees that the number of nuclear weapons continues to fall, by an equal number on both sides, so that a dangerous imbalance does not arise. … It also refutes the accusation that the nuclear powers always demand that non-nuclear states do without atomic weapons, without disarming themselves. Even with the treaty, the idea of a world free of nuclear weapons remains just a hope. But a small step is better than nothing.”

“Barack Obama, who negotiated the treaty with Moscow, is justified in celebrating a major personal victory. Despite his serious defeat in the midterm elections, the US president invested a lot of political capital in order to get the treaty through the Senate. US voters are unlikely to thank him for it — they have other worries. But they should, at least for one day, feel a little proud of their president.”

Senator Harry Reid boldly states that he is the savior of the world economy. He is clearly frustrated that voters are not more appreciative of what’s he’s done for them.

Where would the world be without Harry Reid?
That’s The Question the World Needs To Ask, That’s right folks, according to Harry Reid, he alone saved us all from a world wide depression.
What Cave As He Been Living In? Is H. Reid totally Senile?
Please watch the interview and you decide.

He doesn’t look or sound radical. President Obama, in fact, is so calm, almost regal, he makes government takeovers and redistribution schemes seem almost reasonable. But the facade is wearing thin.

Fortune 500 leaders who believed Obama’s moderate rhetoric, and even raised cash and voted for him, have soured on him. They now believe he’s bad for business and hostile to the American free enterprise system.

Even die-hard Obama fan Tom Wilson, head of Allstate, says the president could have used some executive experience on his all-academic economics team. Not a single former corporate executive is in Obama’s Cabinet or among his top economic advisers. “I think it was a hiring mistake for the administration,” Wilson told CNN last week.

Wilson also suggests Obama convene a summit with business leaders to clear the air. “I’d spend less time on the G-20 and more time on the U.S. 100,” he advised.

Problem is, CEOs have walked away from prior White House luncheons shocked at (1) Obama’s dismissive reaction as they try to explain the harm of his anti-business policies and (2) his shallow understanding of business and economic matters.

They’re not just put off by the president’s harsh depiction of “fat cat bankers” and other anti-business bashings. They’re more disturbed by his arrogant ignorance. “The truth is that not even the Franklin Roosevelt administration was as hostile to and ignorant about free enterprise as this administration is,” said publisher Steve Forbes.

Few before the election dared call Obama the “s” word. Independent voters, who ensured Obama’s victory, generally considered him to be a centrist or slightly left of center. Now they view him as extremely liberal. And by Democrats’ own polling, a solid majority — 55% — of all likely voters now think “socialist” is a more accurate way to describe Obama.

As former President Ronald Reagan might have said, “Obama, there you go again.”

The current occupant of the White House claims to know how to create jobs. He claims jobs have been created. But so far the score is Great Obama Depression 2.2 million lost jobs, Obama 0 — a blowout.

Obama is as hopeless, helpless, clueless and bankrupt of good ideas as the manager of the Chicago Cubs in late September. This “community organizer” knows as much about private-sector jobs as Pamela Anderson knows about nuclear physics.

It’s time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer. With his massive spending and tax hikes — rewarding big government and big unions, while punishing taxpayers and business owners — Obama has killed jobs, he has killed motivation to create new jobs, he has killed the motivation to invest in new businesses, or expand old ones. With all this killing, Obama should be given the top spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

A new analysis of the U.S. economy shows that since 2007, the private sector has lost 10.5 million jobs while the public sector has added 720,000 jobs, creating a “death spiral” for the nation’s economy.

The study comes from The Free Enterprise Nation, a nonpartisan national membership/advocacy organization for individuals and businesses that make up the private sector.

The analysis was done using statistics about employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.